President Figueres, who is center-left, pointed out to the assembled analysts that the people who had voted for Obama were expecting him to get them out of the crisis, not the world, and that he would be judged accordingly and that those outside the USA should not get their hopes too far up, especially in regards to the further liberalization of world trade.

I'm not up on financial matters, as you've probably noticed, but I would think that most Americans want other countries to do well, rather than only worry about ourselves.

There are so many versions of that Groucho quote:

[When asked what makes a successful businessman] Honesty and sincerity, if you can fake those you're a businessman for life

In politics, sincerity is everything. Once you can fake that, you've got it made!

Honesty and fair-dealing is the way to succeed — if you can fake that, you've got it made.

Sincerity! If ya can fake THAT you've got it made!

The real secret of acting is sincerity. Once you learn how to fake that, you've got it made.

Sincerity is the key to success. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made!

Sincerity is the key to success. Once you can fake that you've got it made.

The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that you've got it made.

Sometimes it is even attributed to George Burns. :-) I'm guessing Groucho used variations of the joke many times.

Hyperinflation hurts the rich as much as the poor. The way banks are holding on to money, I think deflation is more likely in the near future.

Thanks to a credit boom that dates back to at least the early 1980s, and which accelerated rapidly after the millennium, the vast majority of the effective money supply is credit. A credit boom can mimic currency inflation in important ways, as credit acts as a money equivalent during the expansion phase. There are, however, important differences. Whereas currency inflation divides the real wealth pie into smaller and smaller pieces, devaluing each one in a form of forced loss sharing, credit expansion creates multiple and mutually exclusive claims to the same pieces of pie. This generates the appearance of a substantial increase in real wealth through leverage, but is an illusion. The apparent wealth is virtual, and once expansion morphs into contraction, the excess claims are rapidly extinguished in a chaotic real wealth grab. It is this prospect that we are currently facing today, as credit destruction is already well underway, and the destruction of credit is hugely deflationary. As money is the lubricant in the economic engine, a shortage will cause that engine to seize up, as happened in the 1930s. An important point to remember is that demand is not what people want, it is what they are ready, willing and able to pay for. The fall in aggregate demand that characterizes a depression reflects a lack of purchasing power, not a lack of want. With very little money and no access to credit, people can starve amid plenty.

Attempts by governments and central bankers to reinflate the money supply are doomed to fail as debt monetization cannot keep pace with credit destruction, and liquidity injected into the system is being hoarded by nervous banks rather than being used to initiate new lending, as was the stated intent of the various bailout schemes. Bailouts only ever benefit a few insiders. Available credit is already being squeezed across the board, although we are still far closer to the beginning of the contraction than the end of it. Further attempts at reinflation may eventually cause a crisis of confidence among international lenders, which could lead to a serious dislocation in the treasury bond market at some point. If a debt-junkie economy can no longer easily raise funds, then interest rates would rise substantially and spending at home would be drastically cut. This would be the financial equivalent of hitting the 'emergency stop' button on the economy, as it would cause a far larger rash of defaults than anything we have seen so far. We are not there yet though. Currently the dollar is benefiting from an international flight to safety, and it will probably continue to do so for some time, despite temporary counter-trend pullbacks from time to time.

http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/2008/11/debt-rattle-november-29-2008-inflation.html

Geopolitical shape-shifting sans American schematics.

There has been considerable re-alignment in the ME as well. The trend is similiar in that neighbor states are finding common interests and coalescing around them. Turkey is becoming an "honest broker" in the region. Qatar is playing a similiar role. With French support.

....and what about our Southern Hemisphere? and hasn't Spain been actively cutivating her historical ties in the region?

Trends the American foriegn policy establishment does not finds favorable even though they are advancing regional stability.

It remains to be seen how the Obama team reacts to the changed territory ahead.